Chapter 29
The narrow room, in which they were smoking and
taking refresh~ ments, was full of noblemen. The
excitement grew more intense, and every face betrayed
some uneasiness. The excitement was specially keen for
the leaders of each party, who knew every detail, and had
reckoned up every vote. They were the generals
organizing the approaching battle. The rest, like the rank
and file before an engagement, though they were getting
ready for the fight, sought for other distractions in the
interval. Some were lunching, standing at the bar, or
sitting at the table; others were walking up and down the
long room, smoking cigarettes, and talking with friends
whom they had not seen for a long while.
Levin did not care to eat, and he was not smoking; he
did not want to join his own friends, that is Sergey
Ivanovitch, Stepan Arkadyevitch, Sviazhsky and the rest,
because Vronsky in his equerry’s uniform was standing
with them in eager conversation. Levin had seen him
already at the meeting on the previous day, and he had
studiously avoided him, not caring to greet him. He went
to the window and sat down, scanning the groups, and
listening to what was being said around him. He felt
depressed, especially because everyone else was, as he saw,
eager, anxious, and interested, and he alone, with an old,
toothless little man with mumbling lips wearing a naval
uniform, sitting beside him, had no interest in it and
nothing to do.
‘He’s such a blackguard! I have told him so, but it
makes no difference. Only think of it! He couldn’t collect
it in three years!’ he heard vigorously uttered by a roundshouldered,
short, country gentleman, who had pomaded
hair hanging on his embroidered collar, and new boots
obviously put on for the occasion, with heels that tapped
energetically as he spoke. Casting a displeased glance at
Levin, this gentleman sharply turned his back.
‘Yes, it’s a dirty business, there’s no denying,’ a small
gentleman assented in a high voice.
Next, a whole crowd of country gentlemen,
surrounding a stout general, hurriedly came near Levin.
These persons were unmistakably seeking a place where
they could talk without being overheard.
‘How dare he say I had his breeches stolen! Pawned
them for drink, I expect. Damn the fellow, prince indeed!
He’d better not say it, the beast!’
‘But excuse me! They take their stand on the act,’ was
being said in another group; ‘the wife must be registered as
noble.’
‘Oh, damn your acts! I speak from my heart. We’re all
gentlemen, aren’t we? Above suspicion.’
‘Shall we go on, your excellency, fine champagne?’
Another group was following a nobleman, who was
shouting something in a loud voice; it was one of the
three intoxicated gentlemen.
‘I always advised Marya Semyonovna to let for a fair
rent, for she can never save a profit,’ he heard a pleasant
voice say. The speaker was a country gentleman with gray
whiskers, wearing the regimental uniform of an old
general staff-officer. It was the very landowner Levin had
met at Sviazhsky’s. He knew him at once. The landowner
too stared at Levin, and they exchanged greetings. ‘Very
glad to see you! To be sure! I remember you very well.
Last year at our district marshal, Nikolay Ivanovitch’s.’
‘Well, and how is your land doing?’ asked Levin.
‘Oh, still just the same, always at a loss,’ the landowner
answered with a resigned smile, but with an expression of
serenity and conviction that so it must be. ‘And how do
you come to be in our province?’ he asked. ‘Come to take
part in our coup d’etat?’ he said, confidently pronouncing
the French words with a bad accent. ‘All Russia’s here—
gentlemen of the bedchamber, and everything short of the
ministry.’ He pointed to the imposing figure of Stepan
Arkadyevitch in white trousers and his court uniform,
walking by with a general.
‘I ought to own that I don’t very well understand the
drift of the provincial elections,’ said Levin.
The landowner looked at him.
‘Why, what is there to understand? There’s no meaning
in it at all. It’s a decaying institution that goes on running
only by the force of inertia. Just look, the very uniforms
tell you that it’s an assembly of justices of the peace,
permanent members of the court, and so on, but not of
noblemen.’
‘Then why do you come?’ asked Levin.
‘From habit, nothing else. Then, too, one must keep
up connections. It’s a moral obligation of a sort. And then,
to tell the truth, there’s one’s own interests. My son-inlaw
wants to stand as a permanent member; they’re not
rich people, and he must be brought forward. These
gentlemen, now, what do they come for?’ he said,
pointing to the malignant gentleman, who was talking at
the high table.
‘That’s the new generation of nobility.’
‘New it may be, but nobility it isn’t. They’re
proprietors of a sort, but we’re the landowners. As
noblemen, they’re cutting their own throats.’
‘But you say it’s an institution that’s served its time.’
‘That it may be, but still it ought to be treated a little
more respectfully. Snetkov, now...We may be of use, or
we may not, but we’re the growth of a thousand years. If
we’re laying out a garden, planning one before the house,
you know, and there you’ve a tree that’s stood for
centuries in the very spot.... Old and gnarled it may be,
and yet you don’t cut down the old fellow to make room
for the flowerbeds, but lay out your beds so as to take
advantage of the tree. You won’t grow him again in a
year,’ he said cautiously, and he immediately changed the
conversation. ‘Well, and how is your land doing?’
‘Oh, not very well. I make five per cent.’
‘Yes, but you don’t reckon your own work. Aren’t you
worth something too? I’ll tell you my own case. Before I
took to seeing after the land, I had a salary of three
hundred pounds from the service. Now I do more work
than I did in the service, and like you I get five per cent
on the land, and thank God for that. But one’s work is
thrown in for nothing.’
‘Then why do you do it, if it’s a clear loss?’
‘Oh, well, one does it! What would you have? It’s
habit, and one knows it’s how it should be. And what’s
more,’ the landowner went on, leaning his elbows on the
window and chatting on, ‘my son, I must tell you, has no
taste for it. There’s no doubt he’ll be a scientific man. So
there’ll be no one to keep it up. And yet one does it. Here
this year I’ve planted an orchard.’
‘Yes, yes,’ said Levin, ‘that’s perfectly true. I always feel
there’s no real balance of gain in my work on the land,
and yet one does it.... It’s a sort of duty one feels to the
land.’
‘But I tell you what,’ the landowner pursued; ‘a
neighbor of mine, a merchant, was at my place. We
walked about the fields and the garden. ‘No,’ said he,
‘Stepan Vassilievitch, everything’s well looked after, but
your garden’s neglected.’ But, as a fact, it’s well kept up.
‘To my thinking, I’d cut down that lime-tree. Here
you’ve thousands of limes, and each would make two
good bundles of bark. And nowadays that bark’s worth
something. I’d cut down the lot.’ ‘
‘And with what he made he’d increase his stock, or buy
some land for a trifle, and let it out in lots to the peasants,’
Levin added, smiling. He had evidently more than once
come across those commercial calculations. ‘And he’d
make his fortune. But you and I must thank God if we
keep what we’ve got and leave it to our children.’
‘You’re married, I’ve heard?’ said the landowner.
‘Yes,’ Levin answered, with proud satisfaction. ‘Yes, it’s
rather strange,’ he went on. ‘So we live without making
anything, as though we were ancient vestals set to keep in
a fire.’
The landowner chuckled under his white mustaches.
‘There are some among us, too, like our friend Nikolay
Ivanovitch, or Count Vronsky, that’s settled here lately,
who try to carry on their husbandry as though it were a
factory; but so far it leads to nothing but making away
with capital on it.’
‘But why is it we don’t do like the merchants? Why
don’t we cut down our parks for timber?’ said Levin,
returning to a thought that had struck him.
‘Why, as you said, to keep the fire in. Besides that’s not
work for a nobleman. And our work as noblemen isn’t
done here at the elections, but yonder, each in our corner.
There’s a class instinct, too, of what one ought and
oughtn’t to do. There’s the peasants, too, I wonder at
them sometimes; any good peasant tries to take all the land
he can. However bad the land is, he’ll work it. Without a
return too. At a simple loss.’
‘Just as we do,’ said Levin. ‘Very, very glad to have met
you,’ he added, seeing Sviazhsky approaching him.
‘And here we’ve met for the first time since we met at
your place,’ said the landowner to Sviazhsky, ‘and we’ve
had a good talk too.’
‘Well, have you been attacking the new order of
things?’ said Sviazhsky with a smile.
‘That we’re bound to do.’
‘You’ve relieved your feelings?’
Chapter 30
Sviazhsky took Levin’s arm, and went with him to his
own friends. This time there was no avoiding Vronsky.
He was standing with Stepan Arkadyevitch and Sergey
Ivanovitch, and looking straight at Levin as he drew near.
‘Delighted! I believe I’ve had the pleasure of meeting
you...at Princess Shtcherbatskaya’s,’ he said, giving Levin
his hand.
‘Yes, I quite remember our meeting,’ said Levin, and
blushing crimson, he turned away immediately, and began
talking to his brother.
With a slight smile Vronsky went on talking to
Sviazhsky, obviously without the slightest inclination to
enter into conversation with Levin. But Levin, as he
talked to his brother, was continually looking round at
Vronsky, trying to think of something to say to him to
gloss over his rudeness.
‘What are we waiting for now?’ asked Levin, looking at
Sviazhsky and Vronsky.
‘For Snetkov. He has to refuse or to consent to stand,’
answered Sviazhsky.
‘Well, and what has he done, consented or not?’
Anna Karenina
1424 of 1759
‘That’s the point, that he’s done neither,’ said Vronsky.
‘And if he refuses, who will stand then?’ asked Levin,
looking at Vronsky.
‘Whoever chooses to,’ said Sviazhsky.
‘Shall you?’ asked Levin.
‘Certainly not I,’ said Sviazhsky, looking confused, and
turning an alarmed glance at the malignant gentleman,
who was standing beside Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘Who then? Nevyedovsky?’ said Levin, feeling he was
putting his foot into it.
But this was worse still. Nevyedovsky and Sviazhsky
were the two candidates.
‘I certainly shall not, under any circumstances,’
answered the malignant gentleman.
This was Nevyedovsky himself. Sviazhsky introduced
him to Levin.
‘Well, you find it exciting too?’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch, winking at Vronsky. ‘It’s something like a
race. One might bet on it.’
‘Yes, it is keenly exciting,’ said Vronsky. ‘And once
taking the thing up, one’s eager to see it through. It’s a
fight!’ he said, scowling and setting his powerful jaws.
‘What a capable fellow Sviazhsky is! Sees it all so
clearly.’
Anna Karenina
1425 of 1759
‘Oh, yes!’ Vronsky assented indifferently.
A silence followed, during which Vronsky—since he
had to look at something—looked at Levin, at his feet, at
his uniform, then at his face, and noticing his gloomy eyes
fixed upon him, he said, in order to say something:
‘How is it that you, living constantly in the country,
are not a justice of the peace? You are not in the uniform
of one.’
‘It’s because I consider that the justice of the peace is a
silly institution,’ Levin answered gloomily. He had been
all the time looking for an opportunity to enter into
conversation with Vronsky, so as to smooth over his
rudeness at their first meeting.
‘I don’t think so, quite the contrary,’ Vronsky said,
with quiet surprise.
‘It’s a plaything,’ Levin cut him short. ‘We don’t want
justices of the peace. I’ve never had a single thing to do
with them during eight years. And what I have had was
decided wrongly by them. The justice of the peace is over
thirty miles from me. For some matter of two roubles I
should have to send a lawyer, who costs me fifteen.’
And he related how a peasant had stolen some flour
from the miller, and when the miller told him of it, had
lodged a complaint for slander. All this was utterly
Anna Karenina
1426 of 1759
uncalled for and stupid, and Levin felt it himself as he said
it.
‘Oh, this is such an original fellow!’ said Stepan
Arkadyevitch with his most soothing, almond-oil smile.
‘But come along; I think they’re voting...’
And they separated.
‘I can’t understand,’ said Sergey Ivanovitch, who had
observed his brother’s clumsiness, ‘I can’t understand how
anyone can be so absolutely devoid of political tact. That’s
where we Russians are so deficient. The marshal of the
province is our opponent, and with him you’re ami
cochon, and you beg him to stand. Count Vronsky, now
...I’m not making a friend of him; he’s asked me to dinner,
and I’m not going; but he’s one of our side—why make
an enemy of him? Then you ask Nevyedovsky if he’s
going to stand. That’s not a thing to do.’
‘Oh, I don’t understand it at all! And it’s all such
nonsense,’ Levin answered gloomily.
‘You say it’s all such nonsense, but as soon as you have
anything to do with it, you make a muddle.’
Levin did not answer, and they walked together into
the big room.
The marshal of the province, though he was vaguely
conscious in the air of some trap being prepared for him,
and though he had not been called upon by all to stand,
had still made up his mind to stand. All was silence in the
room. The secretary announced in a loud voice that the
captain of the guards, Mihail Stepanovitch Snetkov, would
now be balloted for as marshal of the province.
The district marshals walked carrying plates, on which
were balls, from their tables to the high table, and the
election began.
‘Put it in the right side,’ whispered Stepan
Arkadyevitch, as with his brother Levin followed the
marshal of his district to the table. But Levin had forgotten
by now the calculations that had been explained to him,
and was afraid Stepan Arkadyevitch might be mistaken in
saying ‘the right side.’ Surely Snetkov was the enemy. As
he went up, he held the ball in his right hand, but
thinking he was wrong, just at the box he changed to the
left hand, and undoubtedly put the ball to the left. An
adept in the business, standing at the box and seeing by the
mere action of the elbow where each put his ball, scowled
with annoyance. It was no good for him to use his insight.
Everything was still, and the counting of the balls was
heard. Then a single voice rose and proclaimed the
numbers for and against. The marshal had been voted for
by a considerable majority. All was noise and eager
movement towards the doors. Snetkov came in, and the
nobles thronged round him, congratulating him.
‘Well, now is it over?’ Levin asked Sergey Ivanovitch.
‘It’s only just beginning,’ Sviazhsky said, replying for
Sergey Ivanovitch with a smile. ‘Some other candidate
may receive more votes than the marshal.’
Levin had quite forgotten about that. Now he could
only remember that there was some sort of trickery in it,
but he was too bored to think what it was exactly. He felt
depressed, and longed to get out of the crowd.
As no one was paying any attention to him, and no one
apparently needed him, he quietly slipped away into the
little room where the refreshments were, and again had a
great sense of comfort when he saw the waiters. The little
old waiter pressed him to have something, and Levin
agreed. After eating a cutlet with beans and talking to the
waiters of their former masters, Levin, not wishing to go
back to the hall, where it was all so distasteful to him,
proceeded to walk through the galleries. The galleries
were full of fashionably dressed ladies, leaning over the
balustrade and trying not to lose a single word of what was
being said below. With the ladies were sitting and standing
smart lawyers, high school teachers in spectacles, and
officers. Everywhere they were talking of the election, and
of how worried the marshal was, and how splendid the
discussions had been. In one group Levin heard his
brother’s praises. One lady was telling a lawyer:
‘How glad I am I heard Koznishev! It’s worth losing
one’s dinner. He’s exquisite! So clear and distinct all of it!
There’s not one of you in the law courts that speaks like
that. The only one is Meidel, and he’s not so eloquent by
a long way.’
Finding a free place, Levin leaned over the balustrade
and began looking and listening.
All the noblemen were sitting railed off behind barriers
according to their districts. In the middle of the room
stood a man in a uniform, who shouted in a loud, high
voice:
‘As a candidate for the marshalship of the nobility of
the province we call upon staff-captain Yevgeney
Ivanovitch Apuhtin!’ A dead silence followed, and then a
weak old voice was heard: ‘Declined!’
‘We call upon the privy councilor Pyotr Petrovitch
Bol,’ the voice began again.
‘Declined!’ a high boyish voice replied.
Again it began, and again ‘Declined.’ And so it went on
for about an hour. Levin, with his elbows on the
balustrade, looked and listened. At first he wondered and
wanted to know what it meant; then feeling sure that he
could not make it out he began to be bored. Then
recalling all the excitement and vindictiveness he had seen
on all the faces, he felt sad; he made up his mind to go,
and went downstairs. As he passed through the entry to
the galleries he met a dejected high school boy walking up
and down with tired-looking eyes. On the stairs he met a
couple—a lady running quickly on her high heels and the
jaunty deputy prosecutor.
‘I told you you weren’t late,’ the deputy prosecutor was
saying at the moment when Levin moved aside to let the
lady pass.
Levin was on the stairs to the way out, and was just
feeling in his waistcoat pocket for the number of his
overcoat, when the secretary overtook him.
‘This way, please, Konstantin Dmitrievitch; they are
voting.’
The candidate who was being voted on was
Nevyedovsky, who had so stoutly denied all idea of
standing. Levin went up to the door of the room; it was
locked. The secretary knocked, the door opened, and
Levin was met by two red-faced gentlemen, who darted
out.
‘I can’t stand any more of it,’ said one red-faced
gentleman.
After them the face of the marshal of the province was
poked out. His face was dreadful-looking from exhaustion
and dismay.
‘I told you not to let any one out!’ he cried to the
doorkeeper.
‘I let someone in, your excellency!’
‘Mercy on us!’ and with a heavy sigh the marshal of the
province walked with downcast head to the high table in
the middle of the room, his legs staggering in his white
trousers.
Nevyedovsky had scored a higher majority, as they had
planned, and he was the new marshal of the province.
Many people were amused, many were pleased and happy,
many were in ecstasies, many were disgusted and unhappy.
The former marshal of the province was in a state of
despair, which he could not conceal. When Nevyedovsky
went out of the room, the crowd thronged round him and
followed him enthusiastically, just as they had followed the
governor who had opened the meetings, and just as they
had followed Snetkov when he was elected.
Chapter 31
The newly elected marshal and many of the successful
party dined that day with Vronsky.
Vronsky had come to the elections partly because he
was bored in the country and wanted to show Anna his
right to independence, and also to repay Sviazhsky by his
support at the election for all the trouble he had taken for
Vronsky at the district council election, but chiefly in
order strictly to perform all those duties of a nobleman and
landowner which he had taken upon himself. But he had
not in the least expected that the election would so
interest him, so keenly excite him, and that he would be
so good at this kind of thing. He was quite a new man in
the circle of the nobility of the province, but his success
was unmistakable, and he was not wrong in supposing that
he had already obtained a certain influence. This influence
was due to his wealth and reputation, the capital house in
the town lent him by his old friend Shirkov, who had a
post in the department of finances and was director of a
nourishing bank in Kashin; the excellent cook Vronsky
had brought from the country, and his friendship with the
governor, who was a schoolfellow of Vronsky’s—a
schoolfellow he had patronized and protected indeed. But
what contributed more than all to his success was his
direct, equable manner with everyone, which very quickly
made the majority of the noblemen reverse the current
opinion of his supposed haughtiness. He was himself
conscious that, except that whimsical gentleman married
to Kitty Shtcherbatskaya, who had a propos de bottes
poured out a stream of irrelevant absurdities with such
spiteful fury, every nobleman with whom he had made
acquaintance had become his adherent. He saw clearly,
and other people recognized it, too, that he had done a
great deal to secure the success of Nevyedovsky. And now
at his own table, celebrating Nevyedovsky’s election, he
was experiencing an agreeable sense of triumph over the
success of his candidate. The election itself had so
fascinated him that, if he could succeed in getting married
during the next three years, he began to think of standing
himself—much as after winning a race ridden by a jockey,
he had longed to ride a race himself.
Today he was celebrating the success of his jockey.
Vronsky sat at the head of the table, on his right hand sat
the young governor, a general of high rank. To all the rest
he was the chief man in the province, who had solemnly
opened the elections with his speech, and aroused a feeling
of respect and even of awe in many people, as Vronsky
saw; to Vronsky he was little Katka Maslov—that had
been his nickname in the Pages’ Corps—whom he felt to
be shy and tried to mettre a son aise. On the left hand sat
Nevyedovsky with his youthful, stubborn, and malignant
face. With him Vronsky was simple and deferential.
Sviazhsky took his failure very light-heartedly. It was
indeed no failure in his eyes, as he said himself, turning,
glass in hand, to Nevyedovsky; they could not have found
a better representative of the new movement, which the
nobility ought to follow. And so every honest person, as
he said, was on the side of today’s success and was
rejoicing over it.
Stepan Arkadyevitch was glad, too, that he was having
a good time, and that everyone was pleased. The episode
of the elections served as a good occasion for a capital
dinner. Sviazhsky comically imitated the tearful discourse
of the marshal, and observed, addressing Nevyedovsky,
that his excellency would have to select another more
complicated method of auditing the accounts than tears.
Another nobleman jocosely described how footmen in
stockings had been ordered for the marshal’s ball, and how
now they would have to be sent back unless the new
marshal would give a ball with footmen in stockings.
Continually during dinner they said of Nevyedovsky:
‘our marshal,’ and ‘your excellency.’
This was said with the same pleasure with which a
bride is called ‘Madame’ and her husband’s name.
Nevyedovsky affected to be not merely indifferent but
scornful of this appellation, but it was obvious that he was
highly delighted, and had to keep a curb on himself not to
betray the triumph which was unsuitable to their new
liberal tone.
After dinner several telegrams were sent to people
interested in the result of the election. And Stepan
Arkadyevitch, who was in high good humor, sent Darya
Alexandrovna a telegram: ‘Nevyedovsky elected by twenty
votes. Congratulations. Tell people.’ He dictated it aloud,
saying: ‘We must let them share our rejoicing.’ Darya
Alexandrovna, getting the message, simply sighed over the
rouble wasted on it, and understood that it was an afterdinner
affair. She knew Stiva had a weakness after dining
for faire jouer le telegraphe.
Everything, together with the excellent dinner and the
wine, not from Russian merchants, but imported direct
from abroad, was extremely dignified, simple, and
enjoyable. The party—some twenty—had been selected
by Sviazhsky from among the more active new liberals, all
of the same way of thinking, who were at the same time
clever and well bred. They drank, also half in jest, to the
health of the new marshal of the province, of the
governor, of the bank director, and of ‘our amiable host.’
Vronsky was satisfied. He had never expected to find so
pleasant a tone in the provinces.
Towards the end of dinner it was still more lively. The
governor asked Vronsky to come to a concert for the
benefit of the Servians which his wife, who was anxious to
make his acquaintance, had been getting up.
‘There’ll be a ball, and you’ll see the belle of the
province. Worth seeing, really.’
‘Not in my line,’ Vronsky answered. He liked that
English phrase. But he smiled, and promised to come.
Before they rose from the table, when all of them were
smoking, Vronsky’s valet went up to him with a letter on
a tray.
‘From Vozdvizhenskoe by special messenger,’ he said
with a significant expression.
‘Astonishing! how like he is to the deputy prosecutor
Sventitsky,’ said one of the guests in French of the valet,
while Vronsky, frowning, read the letter.
The letter was from Anna. Before he read the letter, he
knew its contents. Expecting the elections to be over in
five days, he had promised to be back on Friday. Today
was Saturday, and he knew that the letter contained
reproaches for not being back at the time fixed. The letter
he had sent the previous evening had probably not
reached her yet.
The letter was what he had expected, but the form of it
was unexpected, and particularly disagreeable to him.
‘Annie is very ill, the doctor says it may be inflammation. I
am losing my head all alone. Princess Varvara is no help,
but a hindrance. I expected you the day before yesterday,
and yesterday, and now I am sending to find out where
you are and what you are doing. I wanted to come myself,
but thought better of it, knowing you would dislike it.
Send some answer, that I may know what to do.’
The child ill, yet she had thought of coming herself.
Their daughter ill, and this hostile tone.
The innocent festivities over the election, and this
gloomy, burdensome love to which he had to return
struck Vronsky by their contrast. But he had to go, and by
the first train that night he set off home.
Chapter 32
Before Vronsky’s departure for the elections, Anna had
reflected that the scenes constantly repeated between them
each time he left home, might only make him cold to her
instead of attaching him to her, and resolved to do all she
could to control herself so as to bear the parting with
composure. But the cold, severe glance with which he had
looked at her when he came to tell her he was going had
wounded her, and before he had started her peace of mind
was destroyed.
In solitude afterwards, thinking over that glance which
had expressed his right to freedom, she came, as she always
did, to the same point—the sense of her own humiliation.
‘He has the right to go away when and where he chooses.
Not simply to go away, but to leave me. He has every
right, and I have none. But knowing that, he ought not to
do it. What has he done, though?... He looked at me with
a cold, severe expression. Of course that is something
indefinable, impalpable, but it has never been so before,
and that glance means a great deal,’ she thought. ‘That
glance shows the beginning of indifference.’